Male Roles Vs. Female Roles in Fiction: Discussion/Analysis/Troperwank

Case in point: The Hyena of Auschwitz.

Lovely, lovely not, page topper.

edited 6th Mar '17 8:42:23 AM by AngelusNox

a good example is azula from avatar, she is a coold heart motherfucker who made the hero living hell and in the final episode she got a psycosis in a atempt to make her simpatic.....that never click to me, azula is just TOO GOOD being a villian to get simpathy and it feel forced for that reason.

TBF that wasn't just in the last episode. It was building up throughout the last season, though it did admittedly feel a tad rushed. It started with "The Beach" during which she admitted some insecurities though she tried to laugh it off, continued with her "friends" choosing love and friendship over their fear of her, and then culminated in the finale.

edited 6th Mar '17 8:58:15 AM by M84

even them I just dont feel it, she was a sociopath for 3 season to bring this in the end? it feel a petty end for someone like azula.

Meh, I think to be fair that she was always a sociopath, even from early childhood, as seen from the flashbacks. The whole insecurity and mother issues thing simply sprang from that. But yeah, her losing it at the end just didn't feel like the right way for her to be taken down.

Her complete breakdown only came AFTER she was defeated, though. She was already showing cracks, but being beaten despite thinking herself superior was the final push.

Regarding villains, I think that's part of the reason why my favorite characters in stories often tend to be pretty terrible people.

It takes a really good writer to do it but I find the most interesting characters for me tend to be the heavily flawed ones who may do really petty and terrible things, but ultimately are humanized to a degree where you wonder if you would have made the same choices if you had lived through the same things they did.

So that's why I think we really need more minority villains like Cottonmouth because he was honestly by far my favorite character from that show,, minority people need heroes but they also should have access to the full range of the human experience which includes the things that ultimately end up making people awful.

it feel a cheap way to make her gray and relatable and in a way backfire.

also I have another thing to complain: in antman a lot of people talk about how Hawk pretty much sideline is on daughter because he is afraid, sure is a bullshit excuse and everything but....it always feel weird the fact nobody bring the issue of him using a ex convict as meatshild for his mission, the fact he is white someone make that part a non-issue and that bother me

Um, Scott himself brings up the point that he's "expendable" compared to Hank's daughter Hope. Another reason, according to Cross, is that Hank identified with Scott since Scott was a whistleblower.

And Scott wasn't just the meatshield. He was the one Hank entrusted with a friggin' shrinking supersuit. That's way more trust than one gives to a typical meatshield.

Also, while it might not have been right for Hank not to trust his daughter with the suit and he does relent on that in the end, his fear is at least understandable given what happened to his wife Janet.

edited 6th Mar '17 9:55:10 AM by M84

he was trust because he was expendable and even them, Cross already figured out Hank plan already making the whole thing non sense from the start.

And let me put it this way, let said Scott was black, a ex convict who have trouble finding a job and a daughter who love him while divorced decide to trust some random white old men who want to equip him with a suit, take another tech this old man devolpt because he dosent trust her on daughter...which it dosent matter because the other guy already know.

The fact Scott is white is what make Hank be just a jerk instead of someone waging old man war.

@Draghinazzo Which is why the most interesting aspect of the Super Man is the Beware The Super Man reaction he instills in everyone else, the Supes himself is a bit boring.

Even the Punisher is a flat when it comes to his acts. Pretty much a pissed off man with a tragic backstory with a love for war and killing that just happens to set his sights on criminals worse than he is in a Crapsack World filled with Grey-and-Black Morality.

Bats is another brand of vigilantism but his internal code and ethics prevent him from falling into the pit of He Who Fights Monsters.

Spider Man is another one like Bats but on a late teen/early twenties poor man with super powers.

Well, heroes are truly limited on how much he can do without being called villains, I mean how good would people really think that Captain America would be if he started hunting and killing Hydra and corrupt government officials without due process even though he would be making the world a favor?

But the Red Skull can kill anyone who's a Skrull or suspected of being a Skrull and no one would really bat an eye because he is kinda able to take the extreme measures the heroes won't do themselves.

Female heroes have the same restrains their male counterpart does but female villains still fall under the redeemable side of villainy more often than male villains do.

Look at comic book Mystique versus the current movie Mystique. The former is a ruthless and cold assassin, expert at manipulation and deceit, a top class super villain and even manages to make Magneto afraid the latter is now a tragic hero who is an anti-hero at her worst moments.

edited 6th Mar '17 10:05:24 AM by AngelusNox

Your first mistake is attempting to have an intelligent discussion about morality using a Marvel superhero movie because, let's be honest, Marvel superhero movies never intend to discuss morality intelligently or meaningfully. They just pretend to be deep or meaningful about stuff.

I mean they and other similar movies always end up appealing to emotions or using feels to answer and confront logical questions, arguments, or obstacles. Or some sort of Deus ex Machina if they can get away with it.

Danny De Vito's Penguin has a lot of fans. As does the Robin Lord Taylor version from Gotham. There's also Judge Frollo from Disney's version of Hunchback of Notra Damme.

To say nothing of what the GI Joe movies did to the Baroness.

@unknowing

Also, another reason Hank brought in Scott and gave him the suit was because he thought someone good at breaking into places and stealing shit would be perfect for a job that involves breaking into a place and stealing shit.

edited 6th Mar '17 10:17:06 AM by M84

I like to pretend that movie was never made.

The sequel was decent though.

Azula I like. Then again, I often like mostly evil villains with some kind of sympathetic excuse, or morally ambiguous characters, male or female. But I found the writing of her to be consistent, and the end wasn't just tacked on. It felt natural to me.

And even if I like unambiguously, irredeemable villains, I also have a strong disposition for forgiveness of characters, so that's kind of what I tend to write.

edited 6th Mar '17 11:10:17 AM by AnotherDuck

I actually liked what they did, or at least what they tried to do with Azula near the end. I think, with a villain like Azula at least, a straight up victory never really works. She's such a psychological villain that beating her flat out would have felt cheap, like a cheesy end to an 80's kids adventure movie where the neighborhood bullies are beaten fair and square. With the ending we got there isn't that same sense of catharsis, but it's a lot more entertaining, adds more weight to the resolution of her and Zuko's storyline, and adds genuine depth to Azula's character.

Re: Ant-Man: Hank Pym being an arrogant douchebag is actually a pretty important part of his character. We've had three Ant-Men so far. Scott is pretty clearly on the heroic side, there's Eric O'Grady on the Pretty Terrible Person side, and Hank Pym in the flat middle. He's arguably the most complex and interesting Ant-Man. I wish the MCU had played with that more, though it's pretty obvious that they went with Scott because he's the easiest to translate into the nice, clean, "obviously heroic" protagonists that the MCU likes to have for marketing purposes.

I saw Hank Pym as the C.O. In the army that has his child in charge of dangerous operations, but objects sending his son to actual missions because he lost his other child in one.

Why sending your own child to do a job you can send someone else you don't really care about to take the bullet instead? Was the whole rationale behind Pyms sending Scott to do the mission in Ant-Man, first he did a few secret tests to see if Scott was skilled enough to do the task and then he and his daughter trained him for the task. But again his callous treatment of but you're my daughter was botched by Hank withholding information from Evangeline about how her mother died.

I would actually say it started earlier than that via her relationship with Zuko. The thing about Azula is that she's very much her father's daughter. She's Daddy's Little Villain through and through, and always has been. But she's also a child and the product of parental favoritism and abuse.

In her own way, she does seem to care about Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee. Mai and Ty Lee are obvious, but she also goes out of her way to restore Zuko's honor and bring him back to the Fire Nation, even going so far as to lie to her father and give her victory to him. Then immediately incorporates him into her social group without a second's hesitation.

Much like she does with Mai and Ty Lee through the series, she shrouds this behavior with veiled threats and flippancy to remain "in control" of her relationship. Because she's Daddy's Little Villain and learned from watching him. But even after Zuko's betrayal, she risks life and limb at the Boiling Rock to try and bring him back alive.

It's only after Mai and Ty Lee's subsequent betrayal leaves her heartbroken and alone that she seems to give up on Zuko, abruptly switching from flying out over boiling murder-water to try and capture him to, "I am about to celebrate becoming an only child!"

While the finale itself makes it pretty clear if it wasn't apparent before that, at the end of the day, all of her malice and sacrifices and brutality were about trying to get that thumbs-up from Daddy, the one person around whom her entire self-image revolves.

Azula isn't a sympathetic character by any means. She's also too far over the edge following Daddy's Footsteps to probably ever be redeemable. But not so far over that you can't see just where she slipped and why, making her tragic. There's almost certainly no saving her, but if you've got the tears to spare, you might take a couple minutes to Cry for the Devil.

edited 6th Mar '17 11:48:22 AM by TobiasDrake

Hank Pym also comes with a lot of baggage that people tend to remember him for despite how long ago it was. The ultimate universe didn't help with perception of him either.

yeah...all my tear dry up when she shock Anag in the back, I like her because she was a unlikable villian, well korra didnt expend time make us tear for zaheer as is gang, just understand him as foe, that is all I wanted it.

my issue with Hank is that by using scott he flip from arrogance douche to pretty much Marvel Waller, someone who use another person for is on end, and is stupid because he bolched is on mission BEFORE even start

They didn't exactly realize the mission failed up until the final moment since it appeared that they were going unnoticed. Which makes sense really. If you want to foil a scheme you should make them think that their plans have gone unnoticed until you spring the trap.

As terrible as it may be to use someone else to do your dirty work it is not completely unreasonable to use someone else when you are unable, but not willing to risk family to do it. Because let's not forget Hank would have done it himself if was still able.

edited 6th Mar '17 11:58:42 AM by Darthwyn

@ Tobias she only used Zuko to get the Earth Kingdom and flat out said she was using him as a fall guy in case Aang did survive

On the topic of female villains, I find your lack of Ursula disturbin;'.

edited 6th Mar '17 2:46:25 PM by PhilosopherStones

Maleficent is also one of the most memorable villains of Disney animated canon, female or otherwise. Even if her motivation was all because she wasn't invited to a party.